Smile, Sunflower
by Blue-Inked Frost
Summary: When Heather McNamara leaves boarding school and starts at Westerburg Elementary, she meets Heather Chandler.


Mostly musical based. In this fic, I imagined Heather McNamara based on deanesque's artwork on Tumblr at heathermacsaysshit. Check it out - it's super cute!

Thanks to Scouts_Mockingbird for pre reading this.

—

Heather's pillow was still wet with her tears. She knew it wasn't supposed to be this way. Daddy and Mommy didn't agree on a lot, but they agreed that she shouldn't cry all the time. She hugged her yellow teddy bear, Honey, more closely to her chest. She'd always taken Honey to school with her and would never give her up, no matter how many other kids laughed at her for acting like a baby or tried to steal Honey or hid Honey in bad places that took Heather days and days to find.

The canary next to Heather's bed chirped, singing a song that sounded happy, and Heather tried to smile through her tears. She really loved Tweety. Tweety was her birthday present this year, her favorite birthday present ever because Tweety was real and alive and Heather didn't have to give her up or go away from her.

Heather used to go to boarding school every year, but that made her cry all the time. She didn't care that the school cost Daddy a lot of money, she only cared that all the other kids and the teachers were always mean to her. Now her parents finally let Heather go to Westerburg Elementary, and she'd get to stay at home and see Tweety every single day. It was a new school and she could be someone new. Nobody at Westerburg Elementary would know she was Heather the crybaby, Heather McWhiny-Diaper, Heather Heather White Feather. Maybe some kids would be nice. Maybe some kid would really be her friend.

"Heather!" her mommy called. Heather wiped her eyes with her blanket and looked at Tweety to try and make herself feel happier.

"I'll smile for you, Tweety," Heather promised. She stared at herself in the mirror and scraped her fists across her eyes. She wanted to look nice on her first day. Mommy would do her hair for her, and she was wearing her best white shirt and a green and blue tartan skirt. She looked down at her feet and wriggled her toes in her black patent Mary-Janes and the lovely white lace socks from her grandmother.

Her mother called again, so Heather hurried up to her mom's room. It would be really bad to be late on the first day!

"That's my little sunflower." Heather's mom fixed a large yellow sunflower clip in her hair, between two neat puffs. Heather looked anxiously at herself in her mother's vanity, hoping that she looked right. Mom's vanity was beautiful, all gold and white inlays with bright diamond bevelling on all sides of the large mirror. Looking at herself in it made Heather feel so small and silly. And Mommy was beautiful too, tall and made-up with her lipstick the color of plums and her hair in a high cornrow bun like a princess, beautiful in a way that maybe Heather would never grow up to be. "Smile for me, okay?" her mom said. "Now you have a lovely day, Sunflower."

Mom air-kissed Heather on the cheek so that she wouldn't smear any makeup on her, and brought her downstairs to get her on the school bus with her new cherry-red school bag.

Heather sat in the back and didn't talk to anyone, and none of the other kids talked to her or sat next to her. Still, it was a lot better than being called names or pushed around. Heather reached quietly into her backpack and patted Honey, whom she'd snuck in there. Her fingers tangled in the bear's soft fur and she made herself smile again, looking around hopefully then looking down again when no one noticed her.

But then a big boy leaned over her. "What have you got in there?" he asked. Heather didn't close her bag in time. He started to laugh. "A soft toy? Like a baby?" He laughed so loudly. Heather felt her lip start to wobble and her face turned hot.

"Hey, Kurt!" another boy called to the first boy. "Catch!" He threw a lump of what looked like green slime at Kurt's face.

"That's gross, Ram!" Kurt snatched it out of the air and threw it back, hard. The boys got distracted in their play fight on the bus and stopped bothering her.

The boy called Ram had saved her. Heather looked at Ram's curly brown hair from behind. She decided he looked nice, much nicer than Kurt. She liked him already, even if he liked playing with icky green slime too much.

The teacher wore a lot of big square silver beads that clinked together when she moved in front of the chalkboard. "Good morning, class, I'm Miss Forrest. I think I know almost all of your faces, so we don't need long introductions, but we have one new student joining us this year. Stand up, Heather, and introduce yourself."

Heather looked across the sea of faces in front of her. Her stomach churned with butterflies. At least Ram was nice, she told herself. She tried to smile like a sunflower. "I'm Heather McNamara," she said. "I have a canary bird called Tweety and ..."

"And a teddy bear in her bag like a baby!" the boy called Kurt yelled at her. Then the entire class started to laugh at Heather. Heather felt her lip tremble and the heat of tears start to form in her eyes. They all hated her, again, and they would always be mean to her for doing and saying the wrong thing every time.

Then a large girl sitting in the middle of the class spoke up. She had short brown hair and wore a pink unicorn pasted onto her jacket pocket. "It's okay to have a favorite toy. I have a favorite too," she said. "He's a white woolly dog that looks like Snowy from Tintin, and I like him because he always goes on adventures." She smiled at Heather, and Heather started to feel a little better.

"My favorite toy is my Astronaut Barbie," the girl sitting on the right of the large girl said. "Girls can do anything they want to do, right, Martha?"

"Mine is my GI Joe Eagle Eye Vision!" Ram said. "He can see anywhere!"

The girl on Martha's left looked like she was mad at Ram, because she'd opened her mouth too and he'd taken her chance first. She had long sleek dark hair, and very dark eyes. She spoke quickly after Ram before anyone else could. "Mine is a special doll made out of mulberry paper especially for my great-great-grandmother. It's worth over five thousand dollars and it's in a glass case and no one is allowed to touch," she said.

"Settle, class, settle," Miss Forrest said. "Heather, Heather will show you to your seat." Heather frowned, not sure why the teacher said her name twice. A girl wearing red stood up. Her blonde curls bounced in every direction as she walked, and she wore different clothes to everyone else in the class. She was dressed more like a grown-up than like a kid, with a sharp pointed red jacket like something Heather's mom would wear and a long red skirt. She was very pretty, like a fairy doll, with smooth skin and very blue eyes. If you cut her face in half with a big kitchen knife, both sides would look exactly the same.

"I'm class monitor," the girl in red told Heather. "That means I'm in charge of passing out supplies and ringing the recess bell." She spoke more quietly as she took Heather to her desk. "If I like you, you can get good crayons and paste that's not dried out. If I don't like you ... you can just hope that never happens." She smiled at Heather. "Let's be friends, okay?"

At recess, Heather put her books away and headed outside. She liked Martha best and Ram next best, she thought, Martha because she stood up for her on purpose and Ram because he helped. So she quietly walked over to Martha in the playground. Martha had the two other girls around her already, the one who liked Astronaut Barbie and the one who owned the expensive doll. Martha sat down on a tree trunk and rummaged through her schoolbag. She finally brought out something red and gold that flashed in the sunlight, something that both her friends looked really happy to see. It was a big fancy book with a red cover, and gold edges on all the pages, and as Martha set it up Heather could see it had beautiful illustrations as well.

Ram threw a handball back to Kurt and came running up to Martha. "Can I play today too?" he asked.

"Sure, Ram. We'll play escaping from Milady at the seaside. She can catch Aramis and me, and you can be the only one to escape."

Heather drifted closer as Martha explained from the book what was happening. Three musketeers - Heather didn't know that word - were going to try and escape the evil Milady, who was stealing diamonds and trying to kill them. She crept closer so she could hear more about the exciting adventure.

Then the other kids spotted her. "Who are you supposed to be?" the girl with the expensive doll asked her, in a bossy voice. "I'm Milady. Martha's Athos. Athos is the leader."

"I'm Aramis. He's the smart one," the Astronaut Barbie girl said.

"I'm Dartan Tartan. He's the fighter," Ram said.

"D'Artagnan." Martha pronounced it differently.

"So we don't need any more. Go away," Milady said. She stood close to Martha and gave Heather a nasty stare, like she wanted to attack her for coming near them.

"Don't be like that, Rhodelia," Martha said. She smiled at Heather. "Of course you can play with us. Do you want to be Constance? She's really pretty and she's really nice."

Tears pricked the back of Heather's eyes, after what that Milady girl said and how she'd said it. More than anything else, she didn't want these mean kids to see her cry. "I don't want to play with you anyway," she said, and rushed away.

The girl in red started walking next to Heather along the wall, when Heather just wanted to be alone. "So I see you were rejected by the musketeers," she said. "People like them best because Martha has that stupid red book. It's just a book. I bet Heather was mean to you. She hates it when other people get close to Martha."

"I'm Heather," Heather said, confused. The red girl shook her head like Heather had said something really stupid.

"Did Martha call her Rhodelia or something?" the red girl said. Heather nodded. "Yeah, Martha's the only one who calls her that dumb name. She loves it when people call her the cuckoo name she made up, Milady Rhodelia Claudine Paulette De Winter. She's so silly. Her real name is Heather. It's like she wants to be different from me or something."

The red girl looked expectantly at Heather as if she wanted her to figure something out. Eventually, she added, " _My_ name is Heather too. Heather Chandler. I dumped Courtney today because of you. We both have the same name, we both have curly hair, and we should be best friends."

Heather's hair was one of the things she liked about herself, when she looked in her own small mirror. In summer it bleached out and became thickly streaked with blonde, and she liked the way it looked against her brown skin. She smiled a little bit at Heather.

After recess came art class, which Heather normally liked because teachers didn't usually yell at you or ask stuff you didn't know. Heather the hall monitor was in charge of passing out paper and pencils, just like she'd said. She smiled as she gave Heather good sharp pencils. The yellow pencil was the newest and nicest, so Heather drew a sunflower. Maybe Mom would like it.

Heather showed Heather where the cafeteria was at lunchtime, and Heather got to sit at her table. Instead of a normal school lunch, Heather Chandler had a packed lunch in her own red lunchbox and a paper bag with elaborate sugar-dusted cookies in it. They looked too good to eat, with layers of crimped pastry and white designs like flowers or snowflakes.

A girl with long dark hair in two shiny plaits and green culottes walked up to the table. "Swaps?" she asked Heather Chandler, holding up a packet of sweets in a red wrapper. "You know I love those cookies."

"Not today, Courtney. Maybe not ever. These cookies are for my new best friend," Heather said.

Courtney's eyes narrowed into mean slits. "A stupid crybaby with a teddy bear who probably can't even play tag?" she said.

"It's better than picking your nose when you think no one's looking, Courtney," Heather said. "Like in the back of the class, just before you gave Ram the chalk. I bet he loved knowing you got boogers all over it."

Courtney bit her lip, tossed her plaits, and looked like she was in pain. She went away without saying anything more. Her shoulders were lowered like she was really hurt.

"These yummy cookies are for my new best friend," Heather Chandler said, and pushed the bag across to Heather. She smiled as sweetly as an angel wearing a halo. "Try them."

They were wonderful cookies. Heather went through the rest of the day as if she was in a dream. Heather Chandler must really like her. She'd given her the nice pencils and left that Courtney for her. Heather had a best friend for the first time, even if Martha and Heather-called-Rhodelia and Astronaut Girl all turned out to be big jerks like the kids at boarding school.

Heather's best friend grabbed her by the wrist as she lined up for the bus stop. "You don't need the bus, silly," she said. "I'm your new ride home."

Heather would have rather gone straight home to talk to Tweety and check her water and birdseed, but she felt like it would be rude to say anything. Heather Chandler's mom drove her to their place and phoned the McNamaras to ask if the playdate was okay. Then Heather took her up to her room.

"Mom is so boring, but she and Daddy do or buy anything for me if I scream loud enough," Heather Chandler said. "Some might say it's a strange relationship, but it works for me." She pulled Heather over to her mirror. "You and I have the same name, so we need a signature to tell us apart. Like a color. Any time that stupid Rhodelia wears red, I give Kurt or Ram cookies to push her in the mud. She gets the idea now. Let's see. You have a red bag, white shirt, blue and green skirt, yellow clip in your hair, and black shoes. You can't be red, because I'm red. You can't be white either, because that's not a real color. Neither is black, and besides, black is icky and gross."

She looked at Heather McNamara's reflection some more. She played with the sunflower in her hair, which Heather hadn't wanted her to do in case she messed it up. "I think yellow is your color," Heather Chandler said. "It goes well with your hair, much better than blue or green. You can be yellow, and you have to give me your bag because it's red. I'll buy you a new yellow bag as a friendship present."

"Okay," Heather said, not really sure what she was agreeing to.

"You have some yellow clothes, right?" Heather said intensely. Heather McNamara nodded. She had a yellow lace dress and a few other things. "People will look at us. Red and yellow, working together. People might like Courtney just because she's really good at running and tag and kickball, like she's one of the stupid boys, but they'll look at us and think we stand out."

Heather McNamara actually liked running too. But she wanted Heather to like her, so she smiled like a sunflower and said, "That sounds like fun."

It was fun, being friends with Heather. They went to the mall together and had slushies and went shopping, pretending they were grown-ups choosing work clothing while Heather Chandler's mom paid with her card. It turned out they were both enrolled in the same dance class from Madam Natalya, so Heather McNamara's dad drove them together in his company's best car and teased them about when they would need engagement rings, many years later. Heather had to pretend she was less good at dancing than she was so she could stay in the back with Heather Chandler and listen to her complain angrily about the teacher, but that was okay. She still got to dance.

And, one day, when Heather left her pomegranate lip gloss in a changeroom the other side of the mall ten minutes before closing time, Heather McNamara showed her talent and her friend didn't mind at all. Heather could run very fast when she had to. Running and dancing were just about the only things she was actually good at. So she dashed past the few customers left and was back in five minutes with the lip gloss tube without having to catch her breath.

Heather smiled at her. "I like it when there's stuff my friends do well," she said. "Just don't show anyone at school yet that you can run like that, okay? We'll have more fun if we save it for a surprise."

Heather's parents were so surprised that she hardly ever cried now. Heather could tell they'd expected her to start crying again, although they acted like they didn't, and they were happy with her. She filled Tweety's water bowl every day, gave her treats, and listened to her sing. One day, she left Honey at home on her pillow by accident, and never noticed because she and Heather had to finish their geography project together and it was all a big scramble that left her hair caked with paste all day. When she walked back into her bedroom with clean wet hair, Honey was there waiting for her on her bed, and she realized she could just leave the teddy bear there.

"Bye, Honey," she whispered. "I have Heather to tell things to now."

The other kids at school turned out to be not too bad, especially because she had Heather as a best friend. Heather decided to have a secret crush on Ram, just a little one, and it was fun to think of it. He was so good at kickball. Martha told Heather in art class that her horse drawing was good. Tracy, a quiet girl with long brown hair, lent her an eraser when she needed one in math. Even Courtney was pretty nice to Heather, starting to smile at her and say hi when they passed each other by.

Heather Chandler was late to the cafeteria because she had to sharpen the art pencils, part of being the class monitor, and Heather McNamara was alone for once. No, not that alone. Courtney came up to her with an open bottle of pink soda, one of the really fun and super-sugary kinds that your parents never allowed you to try.

"Hi, Heather. I'm totally sorry about that thing before," Courtney said. Heather nodded. She wasn't mad at Courtney any more, and she had kind of stolen Heather away from her. Courtney had lots of other friends, though, since she was so good at playing tag. "You want to try some of this?" she asked, and held out the bottle.

Heather took a big sip. And then she choked and gurgled. She spat up - she had to. It was so disgusting. The pink soda went everywhere down on her front, ruining her outfit with sticky and nasty stuff. It was a new beautiful yellow lace shirt she'd bought with Heather. She looked like she'd thrown up. Some of the soda was even on her shorts and that looked even worse, like she'd peed herself like a baby. She coughed and spluttered. She'd been poisoned! She couldn't get the taste out. It was so awful and she kept spitting it up. People were looking at her and laughing at her and she wanted to die. Even Heather Chandler, who'd just come in, was standing in the back of the cafeteria looking at her and not doing anything.

"I put cat stuff in it," Courtney boasted. "It's called valerian. Did I forget to mention that? I'm really sorry. Did you know that cats eat yellow canaries?"

Heather screamed. She burst into tears, pushed her hands over her face, and ran away. She hid in a bathroom stall until Miss Forrest came to force her out, and then she cried so hard that her parents had to take her home.

But her best friend Heather came over to her place, sat on her bed while she was still crying into her pillow, and told her all about their plan to do something about Courtney.

"The thing Courtney's best at is tag," Heather Chandler said. "We're going to take that away from her."

A note ended up on Heather McNamara's desk the next day that said: _Heather M. smells like cat poop._ Someone sent an even more disgusting note to Ram that said: _I'm Heather McNamara and I like you and I want to give you a big sloppy kiss inside your earhole._ Ram ripped it up in two and threw the pieces to Kurt, who put it back together and read it out loud. Heather felt like everyone was laughing at her, especially Courtney and Rhodelia-Heather.

Heather Chandler wore jeans that day and a red polo shirt, like a sports outfit. At lunchtime, she tapped Courtney on the shoulder and challenged her to a race around the school.

Courtney was a great runner and Heather Chandler never liked to run at all. Courtney won easily and the few people who watched clapped her a little bit.

Rhodelia-Heather handed over a comic book to Astronaut Girl, sighing loudly. Then she looked up at Courtney. "Hey, Courtney, I just lost my bet. Can I race you and try and win my comic back?"

 _Rhodelia likes Martha best_ , Heather Chandler had explained, pouting with annoyance, _but she's always up to play a joke on someone if you talk to her right._

Courtney, flushed with confidence, agreed straight away. She even gave Rhodelia a head start. The second race drew a bit more attention than the first, and more people gathered around to watch as Courtney gradually caught up to the smaller girl. Courtney still won, but the distance was narrower. Rhodelia did a great job of looking disappointed and sadly giving away a second comic book to her friend.

Then it was Heather's turn, just like her friend Heather Chandler had planned it. She took a deep breath and tried to be brave. "You smell like canary poop, Courtney," Heather McNamara said. "You were so mean to me. _I'll_ race you," she said.

"Of course I will, you stupid snail!" Courtney's cheeks were flushed red just from the last race. Martha agreed to be the one to say ready-set-go, because this was a _serious_ race and needed to be done properly, needed to be run by someone that people listened to. Kurt and Ram and the others all showed up to watch, and it felt like half the school were looking at Courtney and Heather while they got ready.

Heather's legs shook a little bit.

"Go!" Martha called. Then suddenly Heather's legs weren't shaking any more, and she was off like a shot from a gun. She loved the feeling of running, her legs taking her where she needed to go, the way she could always trust her body to move the way she wanted it to even when she couldn't trust her mind to know times tables or trust herself not to cry. She ran even faster than the day at the mall, feeling the wild rush of the wind at her back. She ran like she would have won even if Courtney hadn't already run two races to get tired. She was barely panting when she reached the finish line, and Courtney was somewhere way behind her, slowing down and starting to have trouble.

She'd beaten the champion runner in the grade by miles and miles. Everyone clapped and cheered Heather at the finish line. She laughed, looking at Heather Chandler and knowing her best friend was laughing too on the inside.

"Let's play tag," Heather suggested. It was the last part of the plan Heather Chandler had given her. She jogged back and caught up to Courtney. "Hey, Courtney, we're playing tag now!" She slapped her on the back. "And you're it!"

Then Heather didn't have to do much but watch the plan continue. Even without her, even without Heather Chandler having to step in, the other kids caught onto the game. The game was to make Courtney 'it' as often as possible. Courtney had run so much that even she was too tired to run more, and Heather could tell that she didn't want to play any more. But everyone kept making her 'it' again anyway. Courtney was red-faced and desperate as she tried to catch someone, anyone at all, even someone as slow as Tracy.

People used to like Courtney because she was really good at running and tag and games, but they didn't think she was good at that stuff any more. Heather McNamara was the new fast runner in the grade. Ram invited her to play kickball next lunch.

Courtney looked like she might cry and slunk off to hide somewhere as soon as she could, but Heather McNamara didn't feel sorry for her.

A few weeks later, Heather sat next to Heather Chandler at the top table at her birthday party. Heather had mailed the invitations in just the right way to make sure everyone came. First invite the kids that Heather didn't really care about, so they felt special and the other kids would wonder why they hadn't been invited and start to feel bad. Second, send the invitations to the ones Heather really wanted to be there, so they'd feel glad they weren't left out after all and make sure to come.

It had been one of the best birthday parties ever. Instead of silly magicians and clowns and balloon animals, there was a grown-up band in the garden, fondue and marshmallows over a real fire, an ice cream bar, and they made up their own games to play. Heather and Heather were definitely the two best dressed girls there, in red and yellow party dresses, and everyone's eyes were on them as they walked through the party like two queens.

Martha and Rhodelia-Heather both sat in the back of the party, being pretty quiet. Heather Chandler passed the last party favor she held in her hands to Martha, and swept on past Rhodelia-Heather, pretending to ignore her. Heather McNamara followed her lead. She saw the other Heather watch them as they walked away.

"Someday," Heather Chandler said, "she's going to call herself Heather again."

"It's a nice name," Heather said. "This is a great party, Heather."

"You watch how Martha's in the back and I'm in the front," Heather Chandler said. "Just wait until I'm in middle school. Heather's going to beg to join the Heathers and I'm going to rule." Heather McNamara looked at her, feeling a little puzzled and slightly scared. Heather Chandler slipped an arm through hers, and that made her feel a lot better. They walked linked together, as if Heather and Heather would always be together, supporting each other. Heather and Heather would never have to be apart. Heather gave her one of those rare, beautiful smiles like an innocent angel. "We're going to do it together, best friend," she said.

—

Written for Anthusiasm for Yuletide 2017.


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